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When your parents were young, people could buy cigarettes and smoke pretty much anywhere — even in hospitals! Ads for cigarettes were all over the place. Today we’re more aware about how bad smoking is for our health. Smoking is restricted or banned in almost all public places and cigarette companies are no longer allowed to advertise on TV, radio, and in many magazines.

Almost everyone knows that smoking causes cancer, emphysema, and heart disease; that it can shorten your life by 10 years or more; and that the habit can cost a smoker thousands of dollars a year. So how come people are still lighting up? The answer, in a word, is addiction.

Once You Start, It’s Hard to Stop

Smoking is a hard habit to break because tobacco contains nicotine, which is highly addictive. Like heroin or other addictive drugs, the body and mind quickly become so used to the nicotine in cigarettes that a person needs to have it just to feel normal.

People start smoking for a variety of different reasons. Some think it looks cool. Others start because their family members or friends smoke. Statistics show that about 9 out of 10 tobacco users start before they’re 18 years old. Most adults who started smoking in their teens never expected to become addicted. That’s why people say it’s just so much easier to not start smoking at all.

Danger of Smoking, There are many ways to take tobacco. You can chew it, inhale it through the nose, and smoke it in the form of cigars or cigarettes. No matter how it’s taken it is dangerous, but because smoking is the most popular way to consume tobacco it has also received the greatest attention from the medical field and the media.

When a smoker inhales a puff of cigarette smoke the large surface area of the lungs allows nicotine to pass into the blood stream almost immediately. It is this nicotine “hit” that smokers crave, but there is a lot more to smoke than just nicotine. In fact, there are more than 4000 chemical substances that make up cigarette smoke and many of them are toxic.

Cigarette smoke is composed of 43 carcinogenic substances and more than 400 other toxins that can also be found in wood varnish, nail polish remover, and rat poison. All of these substances accumulate in the body and can cause serious problems to the heart and lungs.

Cancer is the most common disease associated with smoking. Smoking is the cause of 90% of lung cancer cases and is related to 30% of all cancer fatalities. Other smoking-related cancers include cancers of the mouth, pancreas, urinary bladder, kidney, stomach, esophagus, and larynx.

Besides cancer, smoking is also related to several other diseases of the lungs. Emphysema and bronchitis can be fatal and 75% of all deaths from these diseases are linked to smoking.

Smokers have shorter lives than non-smokers. On average, smoking takes 15 years off your life span. This can be explained by the high rate of exposure to toxic substances which are found in cigarette smoke.

Smokers also put others at risk. The dangers of breathing in second-hand smoke are well known. Smokers harm their loved ones by exposing them to the smoke they exhale. All sorts of health problems are related to breathing in second-hand smoke. Children are especially susceptible to the dangers of second-hand smoke because their internal organs are still developing. Children exposed to second-hand smoke are more vulnerable to asthma, sudden infant death syndrome, bronchitis, pneumonia, and ear infections.

Smoking can also be dangerous for unborn children. Mothers who smoke are more likely to suffer from miscarriages, bleeding and nausea, and babies of smoking mothers have reduced birth weights or may be premature. These babies are more susceptible to sudden infant death syndrome and may also have lifelong health complications due to chest infections and asthma.

It is never too late to give up smoking, even those who have smoked for 20 years or more can realize tremendous health benefits from giving up the habit.

Smoking in the morning, especially accompanied by a cup of coffee, has become a ritual that hard to break. However, these habits seem to need to be stopped from smoking at the beginning of the day is more dangerous than smoking on the day or night.

Research shows that smoking after waking up would increase the risk of lung cancer, neck and head. “Morning smokers have high levels of nicotine and other toxins from tobacco in his body. They are also more addicted than smokers who refrained from smoking a half hour or so after waking up,” said researcher Joshua Muscat of Penn State College of Medicine.

To find out why some smokers get cancer and not, Muscat and his team examined the link between cancer risk is there with the habit of first cigarette in the morning. The first study involved 4775 patients with lung cancer and 2835 of other smokers without lung cancer. Those who smoke 30 minutes after waking up 1.79 times higher risk of suffering from lung cancer than those who waited more than 60 minutes. Meanwhile, those who smoked 31-60 minutes after waking up had 1.31 times the risk compared to those who wait at least an hour.

The second study involved 1055 people with brain and neck cancer and 795 people who smoked but did not suffer brain and neck cancer. Those who smoked within 30 minutes when you wake up 1.59 times the risk of brain and neck cancer compared with those who waited an hour. The risk of smokers who smoked 31-60 minutes after waking up 1.42 times than those who wait at least an hour.